Archives

The forsythia is blooming so it’s time to prune the roses and plant some new ones. Of course, the forsythia starting blooming just as a whole wad of snow fell so I’m not entirely confident I can use this old gardener’s rule this year. Never mind, I’m hauling out the compost, the loppers, the shovels and the bonemeal and hoping for the best!

My children are grown now so we missed the Elf on a Shelf extravaganza. And, no I am not sorry. Not that we didn’t have our own, certainly less KGB, elf tradition. It began with my father. But really, it began with his five sisters and three brothers on a tobacco farm in 1930s North Carolina. There wasn’t a lot of money in this big family but there was a lot of love. The older children looked out for the younger right down to making sure the magic and mystery of Christmas, elves and all, was never forgotten. They are all gone now; my father was the last. But, they left me with a lasting love of the season and an unshakeable belief in the power of family love.

As you may have noticed my old blog, All Stories Are True, has migrated over here to my shiny new website. Those of you who have followed me in the past know that I disappeared for awhile there. My last blog post was on the death of my father and then…nothing. Part of what I called ‘the big blank’ is because my family was digesting the huge change that came with Dandy’s passing. Part of it was because our family itself was changing: adjusting to life back in America, graduating college kids, new high school daughter, new puppy, new house. My husband commuted to London for over two years and every Herrick, big and small was a little upside down and inside out. Finally, I was writing The Sparrow Sisters, or at least trying to.

Long, long ago in a United Kingdom far away a thirteen-year-old girl (a thoroughly unpleasant age for all involved) prepared for a weeklong skiing holiday in Austria (as you do). She asked her mother, who was staying behind in London (already giddy with the prospect of solitude and books, books, books), “What will you DO while we’re away?”

“Why, I’ll be suspended here awaiting your return, of course,” her mother replied. Because, really, isn’t that what they all thought? To her daughter she was either a complete numpty or utterly indispensible but as in most things, the truth lay somewhere in between.

When my children had grown past the ‘distract them in their carseats stage’ I still found myself pointing out firetrucks and ‘cowies’ along the road. When they no longer needed things like dollies or cozy sleepers or Legos or squeaky, rattly, build-y toys I still paused at the ads for Toys R Us or Baby Gap. I linger, now and then, over the glossy pictures of American Dolls and read with interest the reviews of picture books and even middle grade fiction. We all know that I am a hopeless Young Adult fiction reader even now.

I am lost. It’s as if I am a sleepwalker woken up in another room. Even the face of my waker is a stranger to me. Nothing is where I left it; my books closed and unread, abandoned in piles at my bedside. This Autumn, a season of such unexpected warmth and sunshine, has left me in darkness. I am constantly cold. Some days I leave my coat on until my daughter comes home from school. I tear it off and shove it into the closet when I hear her footstep at the front door. I bake and I cook but I don’t eat. While my family swirls in and out of this little house I am left standing at a center that I cannot hold. But, I am trying, so very hard. For the first time I am so separate from my children that sometimes I don’t even say goodnight to my daughter, embarrassed that at 8:30 I can’t keep my head up anymore. She is in her room, chatting, working, singing Christmas carols in a high, sweet soprano, and I am in mine, a single lamp puddling light on a book that won’t be read. I am homesick and I can’t go home.

It is a fact that I tend toward melancholy. This is not to be confused with having a sentimental streak. THAT I do not. At our recent yard sale—which nearly killed me and several of the shoppers—I all but threw merchandize (including vintage linen and quilts, 60-year old, pristine kid gloves, silver plate whiskey sour muddlers and a set of library steps) at the milling crowd. “Take it,” I screamed, “Just get it out of here!” When a particularly creepy man asked us if there was more to see inside the house I almost told him “Yes, just go in there and strip the joint!”

We are not necessarily hat people in my family. Except in the summer, of course. I mean, we care about our heads, we just don’t particularly care to adorn them. But, when I noticed that David’s lovely, smooth head was starting to speckle like a quail egg, I hauled out the hats. While the chic beach goers can be seen in broad, elegant straw hats I am most often found under a cricket hat. I have a beautiful straw hat given to me by my friend. Every time I wear it people comment and give me the thumbs up. My friend wears hats year round as needed. In the summer she has a perfectly-proportioned buttermilk colored straw hat with a broad black ribbon around the crown. When we went to Nantucket just before Christmas she bought us both cashmere cloches. My friend looked like a 1920s French gamin in hers. I looked like a penis in mine. No really. Anyway, the cricket hat. You know how they look, right? Bright white and stiff brimmed, pristine and evocative of long lazy afternoons, green grass and Pimm’s Cup.